Growing prosperity: An overview
Developing Repeatable Models® to scale the adoption
of agricultural innovations
By Vikki Tam, Chris Mitchell, Fernando Martins, Sasha Dichter,
Tom Adams, Noor Ullah and Siddharth Tata
Vikki Tam is a Bain & Company partner based in New York. Vikki leads Bain’s
Global Development practice and directs the firm’s global partnerships with
Acumen and Endeavor. Previously, she was a partner in Bain Greater China
and based in Shanghai.
Chris Mitchell is a Bain & Company manager based in London. Chris is a
leader in the Global Development practice and focuses on Bain’s work on
sustainability and corporate responsibility.
Fernando Martins is a Bain & Company partner based in São Paulo. Fernando
is a leader in the Agriculture and Global Development practices and has worked
with many agribusinesses and development agencies in South America and
sub-Saharan Africa.
Sasha Dichter is Acumen’s Chief Innovation Officer and is based in New York.
Sasha is responsible for increasing the impact of Acumen’s work through the
spread of ideas and investment in leaders.
Tom Adams is Acumen’s Director of Impact and is based in London, leading
all of Acumen’s global work in impact. Previously, Tom led DfID’s private sector
and climate change teams in Ethiopia.
Noor Ullah leads Acumen’s efforts in the global agriculture sector and is based
in Karachi.
Siddharth Tata is a member of the portfolio team of Acumen India and is based
in Mumbai, where he leads their work in agriculture and education.
This publication is based on research funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation. The findings and conclusions contained within are those of the authors
and do not necessarily reflect positions or policies of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive
lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people’s health and fighting
hunger and poverty. In the United States, it seeks to significantly improve education
so that all young people have the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Copyright © 2014 Bain & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Growing prosperity: An overview
Microdrip irrigation systems. Drought-resistant hybrid
seeds. Asset-backed microloans. These innovations can
transform the lives of those farming on less than two
hectares of land and earning less than $4 a day. Yet until
relatively recently, they were unknown in most smallholder farmer communities.
“Growing prosperity” focuses on the interaction between farmer customers and
pioneer firms and what needs to happen
to spur sustained adoption, allowing these
firms to serve hundreds of thousands,
or even millions, of smallholder farmers.
What does it take to get the developing world’s smallholder farmers to try one of these products? Importantly,
what would it take to get them to buy these products
again and again? For many of the 2.5 billion people living
at the “base of the pyramid” and relying on agriculture
for their livelihood,1 adopting these innovations could
improve their lives and the lives of future generations.
While there is extensive literature on agriculture in
the developing world, it focuses primarily on the
actions of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
aid agencies and governments, as well as on farmers’
decision making.3 In addition, much of that literature
has been narrowly focused on one crop or one technology
in a certain region and lacks specific business implications
to inform management decisions. Relatively little has
been written about the actions of the pioneer firms
themselves—how they develop and execute their strategy
and operating model as they grow and, in the process,
encourage broad adoption of their innovation.
To answer these questions, Bain & Company and Acumen,
with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,
undertook a joint four-month research effort2 focused
on South Asia (India and Pakistan) and sub-Saharan
Africa (Ghana, Kenya and Uganda) to understand what
it would take to catalyze the large-scale adoption of innovations that could lead to more secure and prosperous
lives for smallholder farmers.
Focusing on the pioneer firm to understand
what drives success
“Growing prosperity” aims to fill that gap by focusing
on the interaction between farmer customers and pioneer firms, and what needs to happen in this interaction
to spur sustained adoption, allowing these firms to serve
hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of smallholder
farmers. By understanding what is working in these
interactions, other actors in the agricultural system can
also better assess what they should, and should not, do
to enable success at this primary point of contact.
In recent years, innovations for smallholder farmers
have frequently been introduced by pioneer firms—
entrepreneurial companies that develop and offer marketbased innovations to serve the poor in places where
governments and traditional aid have fallen short.
These firms provide smallholder farmers with access
to products, services and markets, which can significantly improve their productivity, incomes and lives.
Although pioneer firms have a social purpose, they
are typically set up as for-profit companies, aiming
to quickly and sustainably scale their operations and
broaden their impact. While these firms offer huge
promise, they face challenges that make their very
existence, let alone their growth, extremely challenging.
These firms serve hard-to-reach customers with
limited disposable incomes, and they do so in the
context of broader systems that often are broken. As
a result, very few of these firms achieve scale and
even fewer achieve both scale and profitability.
Key findings: Driving adoption with smallholder farmers
Pioneer firms that introduce an agricultural innovation
face a number of unique challenges that can impede
both the rate and the scale of adoption of a new product
or service:
A challenging customer segment. Smallholder farmers
have low purchasing power, often linked to crop or live-
1
Growing prosperity: An overview
strategically target early adopters, invest in highertouch marketing methods to build trust with these
early adopters and leverage “promoters” to spread and
sustain awareness later in the adoption cycle. Awareness
must also extend to include technical knowledge required
to effectively use the new product or service.
stock cycles. Most of what they can buy to increase farm
output is either too costly or will yield unpredictable
results. As such, it is difficult for firms to acquire a
critical mass of early adopters (those who adopt the
product within the first year of it being made available to
them) who have both the inclination to consider an
innovation and the disposable income to pay for it.
Pockets of applicability. An agricultural product or service
will perform differently in different environments. For
example, seeds will have higher or lower yields depending
on altitude and soil acidity. Finding these pockets of
applicability takes time, as a company and its customers
come to understand the impact of ecological conditions
on product performance.
Entrepreneurs who invest time in achieving
a nuanced understanding of smallholder
farmers will reap significant rewards:
The Four A’s will be transformed from
obstacles into drivers of adoption.
Disconnected markets. Even when a new product is well
adapted to local conditions, the spread of this innovation across wide areas is further complicated by the
geographic dispersion of farmers and the varying levels
of infrastructure—both roads and communications—
in rural areas.
Advantage: Our research indicates that the extent to
which a product is seen to increase financial standing
is the most powerful driver of adoption for an agricultural
innovation: more than 60% of farmers surveyed said
they tried a new product or service because it would
increase their wealth. Pioneer firms must make sure—
often by facilitating trialing—that customers understand
and believe how the new product or service will offer
concrete, financial benefits over what they are currently
using or doing, and construct their business model
(including partnerships required along the value chain)
to reliably deliver on the perceived benefits.
Immature business models. Given the small number
of successful, large pioneer firms working with smallholders, there is a dearth of proven models for founders
to emulate. Furthermore, new businesses often lack the
strategies, processes, talent, systems and metrics to
efficiently and effectively manage the growth of their
firms. Finally, growing a pioneer firm requires a series
of iterations of its business model, which make a company’s journey to scale anything but linear.
Affordability: The innovation must be affordable not
just in terms of the absolute price; it also must be available for purchase at that price when farmers have money
in their pockets based on their cash-flow cycles. Pioneer
firms must optimize unit economics and facilitate incremental purchases to minimize cash outlay required
by farmer customers. More often than not, they also
need to consider the provision of affordable financing
options to put their products within reach, when they
are needed.
Three key findings from our research point to what
pioneer firms and other actors must do to overcome
these challenges and spur greater adoption of agricultural
innovations by smallholder farmers.
First, to address the structural barriers to adoption, pioneer
firms must systematically ensure that the Four A’s of adoption are continuously in place for their farmer customers:
Awareness: In our study, more than 65% of early adopters
heard about a new product or service from a company
official; this drops to only 28% for late adopters, for
whom friends and relatives constitute the primary source
of information and influence. Pioneer firms need to
Access: Easy physical access is important given that
rural infrastructure is often poorly developed. However,
pioneer firms should consider existing retail options
and actual buying behaviors and mobility constraints
2
Growing prosperity: An overview
The Four A’s, from blueprint to scale
As in any other business context, the maxim “know thy customer” lies at the heart of promoting the
adoption of agricultural innovations. No matter how game-changing an innovation may be, pioneer
firms must have a deep understanding of, and commitment to, smallholder farmers to drive sustained
adoption of their product or service. The most successful entrepreneurs understand not only how
farmers live and work but also what they value, hope for and fear.
The Four A’s are a simple and actionable framework intended to help the entrepreneurs leading
these firms understand how their target customers—in this case smallholder farmers—experience
their products or services and business models. Each “A” has particular importance at certain stages
of a firm’s development. The report “From Blueprint to Scale” provides a helpful framework for outlining the four stages of a pioneer firm.4
The Four A’s framework can be mapped against these stages of a pioneer firm’s development as it
grows to scale.
Figure 1: Creating a foundation for adoption
Blueprint
Validate
Prepare
Scale
Maximize advantage through
a deep understanding of target
customers’ needs
Strategically target early
adopters to maximize
“demonstration effect”
and observability
Widely disseminate success
stories tailored to target
customers
Amplify word-of-mouth effect by
leveraging customer advocates
(“promoters”)
Plan production and
distribution in advance to
ensure access in the right
quantities at the right time
Sustain brand presence to
maintain and enhance customer
relationships and trust
Identify value chain constraints
and develop a plan to address
these, including where partners
are needed
Design to facilitate customers’
incremental purchase
Understand cash-flow cycles
and timing and align financing
options
Ensure success of early
adopters through dissemination
of technical knowledge
Carefully consider what kind
of distribution network is
required given farmers’
purchasing habits
Put risk-mitigating structures in
place to encourage initial
adoption
Harness volumes and increased
operating model efficiency
to drive down unit cost/price
Use high-velocity feedback to
validate advantage being created
and refine the product or service
and business model accordingly
Design to optimize unit
economics
Awareness
Advantage
Affordability
Source: Bain & Company
3
Access
Growing prosperity: An overview
A checklist: The Four A’s
Getting the Four A’s right is paramount for creating a foundation for adoption. Below is a set of key
questions to help entrepreneurs systematically ensure that each of the Four A’s is in place for their
farmer customers.
Awareness

 To what extent do farmers know about your product or service category (e.g., microfinance, microdrip irrigation) and about your specific company offering?
 What characteristics (e.g., demographic, behavioral, environmental) should guide your sales
team’s early adopter customer targeting efforts?
 Is the accompanying information (e.g., planting techniques, installation) critical to your product’s
effective use always shared and well understood? 
 What are the most effective communication channels to reach your target customers?
 How will you identify the “promoters” among your early adopter customers and empower them to
tell other prospective customers about your product or service?
Advantage
 Have you understood the specific need your company is addressing from the farmer’s point of view?
Do smallholder farmers sufficiently understand how your product or service will increase their income?
 What alternative solutions exist today that your target farmers are not using? Why not?
 Which gaps or constraints across the value chain can you address directly and which will require
the support of partners?
 Do you have a clear process in place to observe your innovation in action with early adopters
and use the feedback to refine your proposition?
 How will exogenous factors (price shocks or environmental changes) affect the advantage provided?
 How much and what kind of risk mitigation is required for the earliest adopters?
Affordability
 What are the key cost drivers for your product or service on an individual farmer level?
 How can you reduce the cost through redesign of your product or service proposition while
delivering the requisite functionality for your customers?
 To what extent can the timing of the purchase of the product or service be managed to enhance
its affordability?
 Given the income levels and cash-flow profiles of your target customers, what financing options
might you need to provide?
Access
How and where do your target customers currently purchase agricultural products and services?
What is the condition of the physical infrastructure in the areas you are serving?
To what extent are your target customers willing to travel and have access to means of transportation?
Are there existing retail outlets that could reliably and effectively sell your product (providing both
the required information and physical distribution)?
 How would selling through a retail outlet affect your economics and your competitiveness from both the
retailer and end-customer perspective?
 To what extent is the advantage provided by your product affected by distribution timing?




4
Growing prosperity: An overview
before defaulting to a last-mile distribution model. Again,
timing is an important consideration here: A product
or service must be available when it is needed based
on a particular crop or livestock cycle. Pioneer firms
must therefore set up their supply chains and distribution
networks to ensure delivery of their products when and
where they are needed.
Repeatable Models help pioneer firms
promote “good scale” that endures while
avoiding “bad scale” that is unprofitable
and unsustainable.
While these Four A’s are not revolutionary,5 we learned
from our research that few firms are able to systematically address each of these elements in a sustained way
as they grow. None of the Four A’s alone is sufficient to
drive adoption of an innovation. However, entrepreneurs
who invest time in achieving a nuanced understanding
of smallholder farmers will reap significant rewards:
The Four A’s will be transformed from obstacles into
drivers of adoption.
Building Repeatable Models for pioneer firms entails
a continuous learning process (see the sidebar “A four-step
process for building and executing Repeatable Models”).
First, companies focus their Repeatable Models by defining their core market and their distinctive competencies. Before expanding beyond their core, these companies establish clear operating processes and performance
management systems, as well as values and behaviors,
and embed them into all levels of the organization. As
companies expand to new markets, they adopt systematic entry routines while maintaining the agility to adapt.
Throughout the process of scaling, they actively gather
feedback from customers on whether and how the Four
A’s are in place and rigorously monitor performance
metrics. They then use that information to refine their
model to maximize the benefits of the Four A’s for the
local context. Last but not least, companies invest
in the right talent and technology systems to enable
the delicate balance of standardization and adaptation
as the company grows.
To help firms apply the Four A’s, we mapped them
against the four stages of a pioneer firm’s development,
as described in the report “From Blueprint to Scale: The
case for philanthropy in impact investing.” 6 While
the Four A’s are relevant at all stages of a company’s
growth, advantage and affordability will be the primary
focus early on, when the firm is determining a product’s
fit in the market. Access and awareness will become
increasingly important later as the firm focuses on
achieving scale (see the sidebar “The Four A’s, from
blueprint to scale”).
Second, pioneer firms need Repeatable Models ® to
overcome the challenges of scaling adoption to hundreds of thousands or millions of farmers across villages,
regions and countries. While getting the Four A’s right
provides the foundation for adoption, firms also need
the right strategies, processes, teams and supporting
systems to drive adoption of their innovation in an adaptive and increasingly efficient and effective manner, while
ensuring their own sustained, profitable growth. In short,
Repeatable Models help pioneer firms promote “good
scale” that endures while avoiding “bad scale” that is
unprofitable and unsustainable. In our research, firms
pursuing bad scale had introduced costly complexity by
prematurely expanding to adjacencies (new customers,
products, geographies or capabilities), while those on
the path to good scale were implementing aspects of
Repeatable Models.
Third, other actors across the agricultural system should
tailor their actions to enhance the Four A’s and help
pioneer firms develop and scale their Repeatable Models
to bring their products and services to more farmers.
Though an understanding of the key factors of adoption
and scale are paramount, firms and farmers do not exist
in isolation—they operate within a wider market system.
That system can either promote the Four A’s and enable
the firm to develop its Repeatable Model or hinder the
firm’s success and slow down adoption. As a pioneer
firm grows and begins to reach scale, its interactions
with this system (rules and regulations, infrastructure,
access to finance and supporting inputs), in addition
to its ongoing interactions with other key players within
that system (including competitors), will become more
5
Growing prosperity: An overview
A four-step process for building and executing Repeatable Models
For agriculture-focused pioneer firms, building Repeatable Models is at the heart of achieving
scaled adoption.
The best Repeatable Models are built on what companies do best, and they enable the companies
to replicate these successes over and over again with new customers and new products, and in new
geographies. While the need for, and benefits of, Repeatable Models may be obvious, actually
building and executing such a model takes considerable time, effort and patience.
Below are the four key elements for creating a repeatable model, tailored for agriculture-focused
pioneer firms operating in very challenging markets and starting from a small base of customers.
The goal of this framework is to provide leaders of pioneer firms with a way to think through and
discuss their path to “good scale” with their management teams, frontline personnel and investors.
Figure 2:
The Repeatable Model framework is a continuous process of appraisal and learning.
Embed the model so it is internalized and
executed by your team
Focus your repeatable model
• Hardwiring: Embed the operating model and
frontline routines across your team
• The core: Define your core market (which customers,
geographies and products/services) and core
capabilities (what you do distinctively well)
• Market entry routines: Ensure your teams
understand how to calibrate the pace of
expansion and activate new markets
• Penetration: Focus on penetrating your core market
to take full advantage of favorable dynamics
(shared customers, costs, channels and capabilities)
• Adjacency growth: Evaluate adjacency growth
options based on their proximity to the core,
and only pursue them if good scale can be
achieved
• Non-negotiables: Make clear the values and
behaviors that support the execution of the
Repeatable Model
Focus
Embed
Invest
Adapt
Invest in talent and systems ahead of growth
Adapt the model as required
• Voice of the customer: Set up customer feedback
mechanisms to ensure the Four A’s are
continually addressed
• Capital: Secure the optimal types of capital to fund
growth priorities
• Systems: Build scalable technology platforms to
enable efficient processes and information sharing
• Learning systems: Put in place a few clear
metrics that are monitored openly and foster
continuous improvement
• Talent: Invest ahead in the leadership team and
“talent machine”
• Innovate: Build capability to anticipate and react
to customer and competitor evolution
Source: Bain analysis
6
Growing prosperity: An overview
A checklist: Repeatable Models
The questions below will help to facilitate the application of the ideas and principles outlined in
this brief, and guide pioneer firms in building and executing Repeatable Models.
Focus
 When was the last time that you had a deep discussion about your “core” with your team? How
certain are you that your management team and front line can articulate your core?
 What makes your company uniquely differentiated, now and in the future?
• Measurable
• Tangible
• Decisive advantage
 How do you measure your penetration of your core market? 
 What systems and processes do you have in place to assess adjacency growth?
 Are you seeing the costs and risks of complexity? How are you managing these?
Embed
 What are the few most critical frontline routines that really drive strategy and your differentiation?
How thoroughly have your frontline employees adopted these routines?
Do you have key metrics in place that tell you and your employees how well they are delivering against
the strategy?
 Do you have metrics in place that signify whether and when you should consider growing to a
new area?
 What are your market entry routines?
Adapt
 How much time is lost between decisions, actions and market feedback?
 Do you have learning systems in place that take into account regular input from customers and the
front line?
Do you have systems to step back and address the biggest threats to your current model?
 Have you set up clear structures and processes to continually innovate and capitalize on emerging
growth opportunities?
Invest
 Do you have a financing strategy that considers the types of capital available to, and required
by, your organization at different stages of its growth?
 Is the technology your business is using enabling or defining it (i.e., are technology solutions
designed around your processes, or vice versa)? How scalable are your technology platforms?
 Do you have the right leadership in all parts of your business? How strong is your middle-management
“bench depth”? How are you attracting, developing and retaining top talent across your business?
7
Growing prosperity: An overview
central to the firm’s long-term success. Actors in the
agricultural system can and should design investments,
interventions and policies in ways that promote the
lasting success of pioneer firms and the smallholder
farmer customers they serve:
•
NGOs should invest in building partnerships with
pioneer firms and corporations by facilitating
access to smallholder farmers and sharing their
deep knowledge of these customers’ behaviors and
farming practices.
•
•
Governments should continue to invest in public
goods, such as infrastructure and quality monitoring
agencies, while providing financial and regulatory
support to help scale pioneer firms.
•
•
Corporations should build inclusive supply chains
that provide smallholder farmers with demand for
their agricultural outputs, strengthen their capacity
and give them confidence that their investments in
innovations will result in sustained wealth increase.
By providing investment, expertise, networks and
market access, corporations can help pioneer firms
build and scale their Repeatable Models, and by
extension, reach a large and growing base of smallholder farmers faster and more effectively.
The agriculture sector requires considerable investment
by all sector actors to build a robust and supportive ecosystem, and it needs more capital from investors who
take the long view and value social returns. While we
are encouraged by the ingenuity and perseverance of
the many pioneer firms we have studied, more must
be done to support their work. As many management
teams at pioneer firms have told us, the work is consistently challenging and takes a very long time to get right,
and the rewards, in terms of impact and financial returns,
are often uncertain at this early juncture.
Foundations and development agencies should
carefully balance what they do to support individual
pioneer firms who can create demonstration effect
vs. what they do to facilitate the better functioning
of the wider market systems around the firm. At the
same time, foundations and development agencies
can be more deeply engaged in and supportive of
the need to address the strategic issues facing pioneer
firms: defining their core market and distinctive
capabilities, assessing the robustness of their Repeatable Models and determining when they are ready
to expand to product and market adjacencies.
The work of these pioneer firms is simply too important
to remain sub-scale, and we believe that there is potential for real breakthrough in the next 5 to 10 years. With
this study, we hope to help shift the odds more in favor
of pioneer firms and the smallholder farmers they serve.
We hope that current and aspiring entrepreneurs, as
well as other system actors, will find in this study a clear
roadmap for driving smallholder farmers’ adoption of
innovative, value-creating products and services. If successful, this study will help accelerate results for all involved and in so doing, contribute to our collective efforts
to create growing prosperity.
Impact investors should continue to provide the
patient capital that ignites entrepreneurship as well
as the later-stage investment capital to spur growth
and profitability. They must also enhance their postinvestment support, particularly by facilitating access
to talent and expertise as firms grow.
Repeatable Models® is a registered trademark of Bain & Company, Inc.
1
Kanayo F. Nwanze, Viewpoint: “Smallholders can feed the world” (IFAD, February 2011).
2
The core of our primary research was interviews with more than 320 smallholder farmers as well as in-depth discussions with management teams and frontline employees at 11 agricultural
pioneer firms serving smallholder farmers. We also consulted with more than 60 external experts.
3
See Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “Poor Economics: A radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty,” (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011).
4
Harvey Koh, Ashish Karamchandani and Robert Katz, “From Blueprint to Scale: The case for philanthropy in impact investing” (Acumen Fund and Monitor Group, April 2012).
5
See C.K. Prahalad, “Bottom of the pyramid as a source of breakthrough innovations,” Journal of Product Innovation Management 29, no. 1 (2012): 6–12. This article lays out Prahalad’s
own Four A’s (awareness, access, affordability and availability) to stress how innovating to serve the bottom of the pyramid can prompt significant returns for corporations.
6
Koh et al., “From Blueprint to Scale,” 10–19.
8
Shared Ambit ion, True Results
Bain & Company is the management consulting firm that the world’s business leaders come
to when they want results.
Bain advises clients on strategy, operations, technology, organization, private equity and mergers and acquisitions.
We develop practical, customized insights that clients act on and transfer skills that make change stick. Founded
in 1973, Bain has 50 offices in 32 countries, and our deep expertise and client roster cross every industry and
economic sector. Our clients have outperformed the stock market 4 to 1.
What sets us apart
We believe a consulting firm should be more than an adviser. So we put ourselves in our clients’ shoes, selling
outcomes, not projects. We align our incentives with our clients’ by linking our fees to their results and collaborate
to unlock the full potential of their business. Our Results Delivery® process builds our clients’ capabilities, and
our True North values mean we do the right thing for our clients, people and communities—always.
About our Global Development practice
Bain & Company’s Global Development practice partners with innovators, such as Endeavor and Acumen, who
use entrepreneurship or entrepreneurial models to drive social and economic change around the world. The
firm is deeply committed to social impact and invests significant resources in pro-bono support to help grow local
businesses, create jobs and ultimately combat poverty. Bain partners with these and other organizations to develop
and implement strategies, strengthen capabilities and shape sector thinking, working alongside our clients toward
the shared goal of accelerating global economic development.
About Acumen
Acumen is working to change the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders, and ideas.
Acumen invests patient capital in business models that deliver critical goods and services to the world’s poor,
improving the lives of millions. Since 2001, Acumen has invested more than $89 million in 86 companies that provide
access to agricultural services, water, health, housing and education to low-income customers in South Asia,
East Africa, West Africa and Latin America. Acumen is also working to build a global community of emerging
leaders who are equipped to create a more inclusive world through the tools of both business and philanthropy.
Key contacts
For Bain:
Vikki Tam in New York (vikki.tam@bain.com)
Chris Mitchell in London (christopher.mitchell@bain.com)
Fernando Martins in São Paulo (fernando.martins@bain.com)
For Acumen:
Sasha Dichter in New York (sdichter@acumen.org)
Tom Adams in London (tadams@acumen.org)
Noor Ullah in Karachi (snoorullah@acumen.org)
Siddharth Tata in Mumbai (stata@acumen.org)
The full report will be available on www.bain.com in November 2014